Friday and Saturday, including the Townbank 8k

Friday

Friday turned out to be one crazy day!  We dropped off our cute little Higgy and Pooka for boarding and off we were to Virginia Beach.  We wanted to be out the door about 12:00 p.m., but didn't get on the road until closer to 12:45 p.m.  Oops!  So, instead of getting to the expo at 5:00 p.m., we'll get there about 6:00 p.m. I think.  No biggie.  What idiotic thinking!

We were moving along fine, until we hit the DC area, I believe.  Then traffic.  Awful, awful not moving traffic.  Not moving to the point I thought we wouldn't get to the expo and there would be no dolphin challenge for me.  I was pretty upset, but being there wasn't much I could do about it, I tried to keep it to myself.  But, hubby contacted a friend who vacations in Virginia Beach every year and we were able to get some new directions.  And with new directions came hope.

And with hope came us reaching the Shamrock Expo at 8:00 p.m.  For those who want to do the math, that would be 7 hours after leaving the house. Ugh.  We headed in and got our bibs.  I had to hit up two different tables to get the 8k and half stuff.  It was well worth it.

 Then it was off to the Shamrock Store to see what was there.  Because getting a long-sleeve t-shirt, short-sleeve technical shirt, then a hat and finisher's sweatshirt really isn't enough.  LOL!  I ended up with some sweat stuff!  A funky sweatshirt

A fun pair of socks

And a travel mug (that's not on the website...).  I liked a long-sleeve technical shirt, but they did not have my size (which is crazy to me because that size is a medium!!!).  Hubby picked up a sa-weet jacket and by this point the expo was over.  The reason?  The line to pay was so freaking long!  It was fine.  We got our goodies and headed out the door.  But not until I stopped off and picked up a cute decoration for my shoe.  :-)  I got a shamrock from BeeCause Charms.  They are the same charm people I grabbed my Princess shoe charm from at Princess.  Very nice people and from Philly!  Gotta love people wearing their Phillies pride t-shirts.

From the expo, we checked into the hotel.  I started to lay out my clothes for Saturday's run.  We hadn't eaten since breakfast and I wanted to get my stuff ready in case we got back late.  Just as we were about to head out to eat...what, we had no idea!...the fire alarm for the hotel went off.  I felt like I was back in college with a fire drill.  We headed out and went to dinner.  What was the point in hanging around?

Dinner took to us to Doughboys just down the street from the hotel.

We ordered beers from Hawaii, which was pretty good and an appetizer of cheese covered bread sticks that came with marinara sauce.  Dinner saw us chowing down on a yummy tomato and cheese pizza.  Pizza is our normal Friday night dinner, so it worked out.  Plus the pizza was delicious!  While at the restaurant we could see the fire trucks heading to the hotel.  We just kept hoping that it would still be standing after dinner....

And it was!  We went back to the hotel after dinner and everything was still standing.  Phew!  We finished getting our stuff together for the morning's race and hit the hay!  It was a long day...

Saturday

We were up early.  Well, not horribly early, but earlier than I like.  The race started at 8:00 a.m., which wasn't too bad, especially since we could walk to the start from the hotel.  It's a perfectly located hotel for EVERYTHING.  Seriously... We got dressed and headed to the start about 7:15 a.m.  We got to the corral area and just chatted and people watched.  Lots of interesting costumes and people walking around.  Since hubby and I are vastly different in our race speeds, we parted ways with about 15 minutes to go.  He to corral 3, me to corral 5 (which for the very first time in Chris corral placement history was not the last corral!!). 

 
A nice photo of the start as I headed off.  I really had no goals for this race other than to finish.  I didn't care how long it took me, how much I might walk it, or what might happen.  The goal was the dolphin pin that I could only get if I completed both races. But, here's the thing, I didn't want to run this too hard because I didn't want to mess myself up for the half the next day.  It was uncharted territory for me.  How fast can I go without hampering my performance the next day?  So, I took the camera along and figured that would slow me down.

This may seem like a strange photo, but if you look in the background you will see people running.  That's the boardwalk and those are people who are faster than I.  LOL!

A pretty neat view.  This portion of the run was probably the best part of the 8k.  You run up the boardwalk with the beach and the ocean on one side.  It was probably the best part of the race.

So, you turn off here to go back onto Atlantic Avenue.  It's kinda mean in a sense.  See that white thing in the back of the photo on the right side?  Yea, that's the party tent.  You have to turn away from the tent.  Mean.  So mean.  But, honestly, it wasn't that much further until you reach it.

The first time I ran past Neptune.  I tried to get a better shot, but it's really hard to run and take photos at the same time.  LOL!  It isn't too much further from here to the finish line.  A bit further than I would like, but that's the way it works with races...the finish line is always further away than you wish.

So, what was today's goals?  It was to finish.  It was to cross the finish line without dying.  When Garmin said the first half mile, I was at 5:55.  Ummm...what the heck???  When Garmie went off at 2.5 miles I was blown away - 30:08.  I've never run 2.5 miles that fast.  Ever.  And I was a tad bit nervous.  This was too fast.  So, I slowed down.  I purposefully slowed down.  I've never done that in a race.  I was just afraid running too strong Saturday could mess up my Sunday.  Well...when I hit the mats to set off the chip timer I looked down at Garmin and was blown away.  I set a PR.  Yes, after slowing down halfway through, I set a PR - 1:01:51. Crazy!  Going back to my last 8k, it's about 6 minutes faster.  Going back to Celtic Solstice 5 Miler in December it's about 3 minutes faster.  Wha????  Craziness.  Exciting craziness, but craziness nonetheless.

And what made it fun and exciting?  Turns out the hubby PRed as well!  He ran a heck of a race and finished before me (surprise, surprise!).  Once we found each other, which wasn't easy to do when you finish when other people do.  But that's a story for another post...

Afterwards we partied on the beach.  You can't go wrong with an after party on the beach.  :-)

After the party, we headed back to the room and showered.  It was nice.  Then we hit a place called Abbey Road for brunch.  I highly recommend it.  I had a breakfast that involved pretty much every food group - eggs, French Toast, potatoes, fruit.  It was yummy! 

We hit up the expo again afterwards because we really didn't see much of it the first time.  There were all sorts of interesting things and several things I debated about, but in the end we both decided there wasn't anything there we couldn't live without.  Then we headed back to the hotel for a little bit, changed, then headed off to dinner.

Dinner was yummy.  We hit up the same place we did last year and it wasn't not a mistake.  How can penne alla vodka be wrong???

And one of the best desserts ever...Napolean.  Oh so yummy...

After dinner, we kinda crashed.  All those carbs...back to the hotel.  We watched some hoops, Too Cute (Kittens), and called it an early night about 10:30 p.m.